30 Dimensional Fatigue Events

1. An Earth Shattering Kaboom

When dealing with the high energy state equipment that much of arcanotech uses, there is an inherent risk of explosions. Things explode, coal dust, gas trucks, atomic power plants, all of our main modes of energy production run the risk of blowing their top. When a dimensional reactor fails, it fails on a massive scale, and the backlash of membranes of reality slamming shut is phenomenal. These events tend to be sudden and large.

Scenario: The reactor/device is going to go critical and the PCs have a preset amount of time to either reach the device and deactivate it, or escape the blast radius before it goes up.

2. Strange Radiation

Tracking radiation and emissions from arcanotech devices can be difficult as the machines are dealing with alien geometries and exotic particles, if you don't know what to watch for it can be very difficult to just randomly observe a specific sort of particle or energy source. (We didn't scan for protean energy waves!). The effects of strange radiations can range from the standard trope radiation poisoning slow death to more exotic and fitting events such as irradiated victims turning slowly into catfish hybrids or invertebrates in the contaminated area growing to massive size.

Scenario: A radiation leak has caused a two-fold mutation. Humans are devolving into hairy primitives (looking amazing like stereotypical bigfoot sightings) while insects, spiders and so forth are growing to horrific size and the spiders are starting to look at the hairy apes as a food source. The PCs must deal with their own genetic deevolution while attempting to either escape the zone, destroy the device creating the zone, or simply try to evade the tarantula the size of a SUV.

3. Void Event/Implosion

Sometimes when a dimensional device fails, there is an explosion. Sometimes the explosion goes the 'other way'. While the common term is an implosion, this is technically inaccurate and incorrect. When dimensional membranes snap shut, there is a piece that gets caught in the pinch and this is what usually explodes. Most of the time the explosion is outwards into our manifested reality. Sometimes it is inwards, towards whatever dimensions the machines have tapped into. There is a good deal of damage and the appearance is of everything in the afflicted area being sucked into a central point but no heat, or blast damage.

Scenario: A void event occurs, and rather than being slain by the event, the PCs have been sucked through a dimensional explosion and barfed out into an alien landscape. They are on the other side of reality, their abilities make them the aliens, and there is no chance of them returning home. Or is there?

4. Chemical Contamination

Classified Genetic Material is a common mcguffin in the Cosmic Era, and dimensional breach events are often the source of these strange chemicals, and compounds. Sometimes an arcanotech device will do something strange. The CERN III dimensional reactor started leaking a compound identified as LCL-C3 which at the time was unknown, but is now a mass produced polymer superconducting fluid for use in AISC and other arcanotech computers. Other devices have leaked blood, tree sap, strange chemicals, and so forth.

Scenario: A device has a sustained leak, and is producing a small amount of a slippery blue superfluid. The fluid has the strange property of causing metal to crack and turn into metallic crystalline shapes. It has already ruined some expensive machinery but the crystals are found to be valuable. The PCs are tasked with escorting a shipment of the material and the crystals it creates to a point B. While making the pick up, the PCs and the facility are hit by a major shadowrunning operation to smash and grab the goods.

5. Biotoxin Contamination

The other dimensions that arcanotech touches aren't always friendly or conducive to organic life, or are host to non-carbon based lifeforms. Often a device will fail, and there isn't a massive explosion, or a sudden burst of hot radiation. Sometimes there is a venting from that other place. The resulting gout of alien chemicals creates a contamination zone. Some potential contaminants include atmospheric toxins (whiff of sulfur) choking fumes (as per a long rotten tomb, with mephitic vapors) or exposure to known but anachronistic chemicals such as a cloud of mustard gas, or chlorine gas.

Scenario: After a near miss stopping an arcanotech device in the hands of a madman, the device begins belching out thick clouds of roiling greenish smoke. The smoke causes internal hemorrhaging and can easily contaminate water supplies. The PCs have a countdown to find medical treatment before they bleed out on the inside.

6. Big Ass Bug Hunt

Bugs are creepy, bugs are the closest things to aliens we experience on Earth, and lots of people are weirded out by them. So it makes sense that for some reason, insects, and things that for lack of a better term look and act like insects are not entirely uncommon in the realms of arcanotech. Bug Hunts are what happen when there is an arcanotech failure that creates a semi-permenant portal between dimensions, big bugs from alternate realities come to Earth to check out the real estate. As big ass bugs, they are very capable, likely have some sort of intelligence, and recognize humans as the dominant species here. How odd would it be if giant insects were weirded out by rats and tiny monkeys are we are just as horrific an alien to them as they are to us?

Scenario: straight forward, lock and load. Big ass bugs are loose and its up to the PCs and their guns to bring down the bug menace and save the day. Kill the bugs, destroy the machine, maybe lob a few bombs through the portal before it closes.

7. Parasite infestation

Not all creatures that come out of a dimensional rift are eight foot tall warrior breed space mantises. Sometimes the creature that comes out is small, sometimes almost invisible to the naked eye like mites and gnats. The parasite is easily overlooked until it starts decimating local food supplies (tribbles) starts infesting human hosts (brain stem worms, X-Files, Star Trek, etc) or begins spreading a horrific but non-lethal disease, such as space fleas spreading a skin disease that causes scarring, blackened skin discoloration, or if untreated a pathological form of leprosy.

Scenario: The latest device has released a small worm like parasite into a small section of the water supply, and the worms mature inside a human host, driving it to mate like mad to spread its offspring through bodily fluids. The mature worms make their way into the spinal column where they end up remote controlling the host through emotion manipulation. Better not let any infected people leave the area, since the parasite likes its host all jacked up on sugar, sex, and violence.

8. Random Teleportation

Related to void event, random teleportation is fairly common with arcanotech that is working with teleportation. It is far less common with other applications, though parts have vanished out of arcanotech labs and have been later found via tracking isotopes in very unlikely places, such as under antarctic ice packs.

Scenario: The entire lab has been brute force teleported out of its familiar and safe location and dropped in an inhospitable location, such as the Sudanese desert. The PCs, now cut off from their familiar world of CogNet tech and instant communications are left to their own devices to survive desert nomads, the environment, and anything else that might have happened in the teleport event.

9. Knocked out of Phase

Time-Space is an important aspect of arcanotechnology, and manipulating when, is often as important as manipulating how and why. Phase events look similar to teleportation events, but usually involve objects being melded together (when two objects occupy the same space out of phase, no problem, same phase, big problem). Called a Philadelphia Event, phase events involve objects being knocked slightly out of time-space and eventually coming back together. This can and has created multiple versions of the same object, partial copies, and has merged things together that in a few instances, have survived.

Note to self: phase merge article, man-woman merged into single entity, human plant hybrid, human animal hybrid, force cyborg

Scenario: The PCs are on an experimental craft (stolen?) and there is a power plant/arcanotech failure and the ship and its crew are temporarily knocked out of phase. They will eventually return to normality, but there is no telling when and where. Until then, they are ghosts, and can walk around and do whatever they want, they can even leave the ship, but the father they are from the core when normality is restored the more likely they are to remain knocked out of phase.

10. Mutagen Exposure

The secret is in the ooze, mutagens are a common exposure risk with certain pieces of arcanotech, more so those that are dealing with liquids than those involved in power generation. This is a major source of classified genetic material, though most mutagens just cause horrific fast growing cancers or diseases like Morgellions.

Scenario: the PCs have been contaminated by their recent exposure to a tank of contaminated waste fluid, over the next 1D6 months they will begin slowly mutating into a hybrid creature with the mind and general metabolism of a human, but many of the physical features found in the creatures that ventured into the contaminated water and perished. Hello Frogman, Fishman, Turtleman, and more. Except instead of heroes on the halfshell they are fast becoming science experiments in the making. They have to flee and seek a genetic treatment to reverse the damage.

11. Mass Delusion

Not all things that come out of an arcanotech dimensional failure can be metered or measured. It isn't uncommon for a mania or mass delusion to come out of gear meltdown. Almost anything can happen in the minds of the victims, and even when the event is over and the delusion has faded, the victims are still left with echoes and ghosts of the event because in their mind it was more real than reality.

Scenario: There has been a reactor failure, and there was(?) an infestation event, and it was down to the PCs and their shotguns to make sure that the (monster of the week, best suited to group) didn't escape and run amok. The PCs blast away, secure the device, or fail to secure it before coming down from their induced hypersaturated state. Instead of heroes they are now psychopaths standing in a room full of bodies of the people they killed in their delusional state. Whats real man? OMG whats even real?

12. Hive Mind Control

There are things in the angles between planes of existence and these things are ancient, alien, and incredibly hostile to just about everything. These are the gods that Lovecraft wrote of. The arcanotech breach has gotten the attention of one of these malicious entities. While unable to enter out reality (thank everything holy and unholy for that) it is able to extend its influence through the rift and starts mind controlling the local population. Insert cults, murder rape rampages, and the worst possible inhuman behavior as an alien god starts using people as finger puppets.

Scenario: A great old one (Hastur cough cough) has stuck a tendril through a malfunctioning powerplant and is creating a massive suicide cult that once large enough plans on self destructing the power plant and creating a potential permanent rift through which the alien god can begin manifesting on Earth to start eating people's souls. The PCs have to fight off mind control, zealots, and public disbelief to save the entire city.

13. Miraculous Event/Celestial

The Cosmic Era is not without Faith, though it is not the religion of the current day. There are rare events where things deemed miracles have occurred through a failure of arcanotechnology. Celestial beings (winged luminescent humans) interactions with a greater benevolent intelligence (God?) and miraculous healings have occurred.

Scenario: the PCs have survived a minor arcanotech failure, but the failure opened a celestial conduit and there is a wave a faith surging through the community because of the event. Several terminally ill patients have risen from their beds, and a woman is now speaking with 'God' and is revealing powerful secrets of dangerous people. The PCs are contacted to either protect this woman and her followers, or is on a shadowrun to silence her.

14. Infectious Disease

There are many places that are unclean, and filled with an almost supernatural pestilence. These failures of arcanotech can spread alien diseases that can quickly burn through populations, leaving few if any survivors. The worst diseases are the ones that kill their host so quickly that transmitting the disease to a new host is usually out of the question, ebola and other hyperaggressive diseases fall into this category. Rather than a case of Martian Herpes or Jovian flu, flesh dissolving diseases, and other body horror afflictions are the norm. The best defense is rapid and rigid quarantine regulations, flamethrowers, and fusion incinerators.

Scenario: There has been a disease outbreak on a lunar colony, and the PCs are either trying to escape from the quarantine, or are part of the group keeping the infected in. It is a little worrisome that there is a second quarantine zone being built up behind their zone...

15. Zombie Outbreak

The unburied dead are rising up to consume the flesh of the living. Zombies are a small part of the Cosmic era, they dont have the numbers of the zombie movies, and a man in a power armor suit can literally take a nap in the middle of the largest most aggressive zombie horde. A variation of the infectious disease meets the bug hunt.

Scenario: the PCs are caught in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by a massive toxic contamination of the sanitary system. They are trapped in an arcology full of the undead, and barricaded cells of paranoid arco dwellers and the military outside. Rescue? The military is just going to let the disease burn itself out and then move in and clean up whatever's left.

Alt Scenario: the PCs are tasked with reopening a locked down military research geofront. Mayhem and hijinks ensue.

16. Parapsychic Eruption

The connection between parapsychic ability and arcanotech is nebulous but somewhat known in a mathematical abstract sense. When breaching dimensional membranes, it is possible for the device, in a moment of cascading failure, to spin off much smaller conduits. These flailing conduits of cosmic power will attach to the hyperdimensional shadows of things, like humans, aka souls. Most parapsychics develop their connection through personal experience and learn to temper that ability through self control and training. A group of lab test subjects, interns, and other sundry personnel in a lab, not so much.

Scenario: the PCs have been called in to respond to a group of erupted parapsychics in full burn. They didn't know how to handle the power, and they can't control it. There is collateral damage, dead bodies, and try for sedation because this could be valuable information. And don't shoot any of them in the damn head.

Alt Scenario: The PCs are caught in the blast, and they randomly erupt parapsychic powers and are left to struggle with them. After a period of prolonged burn the power dimishes to the point they have the ability to begin controlling it. But once you have the ability to read peoples mind and control their thoughts, why would you stop?

17. Spectral Manifestation

Ghosts, spectres, poltergeists, haunts, etc, are all real. They are actually the hyperdimensional shadow of a human being that hasn't 'blown away' after the demise of the body. The soul itself is just a hyperdimensional extension of a human being. These ghosts are left disjointed to wander the angles between the planes, impotent and powerless, and usually completely unaware of their own existence.

Scenario: A catastrophic rupture in a device has caused a 'ghost zone' to form. Phantoms and other inhuman and often alien figures are seen wandering around, and slowly these spectral beings are beginning to notice the living, and its starting to make them mad. The PCs are called in with proton generators and D-Cells to clean out the infestation before the ghosts start attacking people.

18. Temporal Event

Time is an artificial construct of linear thought, according to the precepts of arcanotechnology and the mathematics that underlie it. Moving things through time is possible, though the notion of time travel and creating temporal paradoxes are simply not possible. Changing the outcomes of events creates more dimensional planes, which are already conjecturally infinite in number. No one can go back and Kill Hitler and stop WWII because it already happened in local linear time.

Scenario: A cascade reactor has failed in the test phase, and in doing so has colocated itself into two time periods. Walking one way through the reactor drops the engineer in the middle Cretaceous period, while a raptor going the other way finds itself in the level 3 security facility at Shinra Electric Plant 7. Dinosaurs and rail guns, romantic comedy with dinosaurs, railguns, and murder ensues.

19. Hellish Event/Infernal

Entities that can best be described as demons have been already encountered in the Cosmic era. These potent and thoroughly evil beings exist the spread pain and suffering, and turn on each other as soon as there is nothing left to fight. Demonic possession, hell risen undead, nightmarish monsters and hellish mutations abound when the negative effluvia finds a way to vomit into reality.

Scenario: the PCs have been caught in the opening of a hellmouth. The infernal forces are well acquainted with arcanotech, and have repaired the malfunctioning device that opened their door, and made it into a permanent door. The PCs have to pick up their best guns, lay the best plans they can and hope that when fighting the agents of hell that when they die, their souls are able to escape consumption or torment.

20. Infectious Insanity

There are manias that have occurred where men have accused women of witchcraft and put them to the torch and women have gone mad and poisoned their entire families. Insanity is infectious. The infectious insanity breach can come from a small event, creating a small number of carriers who start spreading paranoia, obsession, or some other mental malady until it creates a sicken mental gestalt that merges into a super-insanity. Unlike the Mass Delusion event, insanity spreads rapidly and it doesn't just wear off after a while. Unless treated with meds, therapy and such it is permanent.

Scenario: The PCs are caught in the midst of an outbreak of infectious insanity, but they don't know about the inciting event, only that the arco they are working in is slowly being consumed by an ever increasing rash of premeditated serial murders where the killers are convinced that their victims are actually trapped in a nightmare and the only way out is to kill them. Then one of the PCs is infected...

21. Hyperdimensional Zone

Hyperdimensional Zones are places where conventional geometry and mathematics start breaking down. The hyperdimensional zone is relatively common as the core of every dimensional engine is a hyperdimensional zone, this is where the power is drawn from. The same holds true for dimensional heat sinks. In a more conventional zone, squares have 5 sides, cubes have 7, and strange new laws of physics hold sway. There can be colors without names, and synesthesia is very common affliction inside these zones.

Scenario: After a reactor failure, the inside of a demi-arco has been remodeled into an E.C. Escher painting. Elevators lead to places not on earth, some rooms exist in different time periods, and the outsides of the building are starting to break up. The PCs have to make their way through the labyrinth to the core of the building and hopefully reverse the systems and restore normality before the arco breaches and vents its contents into the twisting nether.

22. Alien Incursion

Aliens, Extra-Dimensionals, grays, whatever you want to call them, outsides come knocking at the proverbial door. The aliens are physically on par with humanity, and have similar levels of technology, though the typical encounter should have the aliens mounting more advanced but completely mundane hypertech gear. The Aliens appear through the breach, and they are equipped with weapons, encounter gear, and maybe even an ultralight vehicle or two. They are as much explorers, but more like Spanish Conquistador explorers than we come in peace.

Scenario: The device begins operating erratically and eventually disgorges a squad of gray aliens (big heads, big eyes, little bodies, the Roswell guys) and they are frantic, wearing aluminum foil like garments (laser reflective light armor) and have maser pistols, scanners, and are ready to take hostages to brain drain, and attempt to find their way back home. The PCs are tasked with containing the aliens, capturing them and as much of their tech as possible.

23. Alien Infestation

Then there are the other kind of aliens, the real-oh-shit kind of aliens. These aliens are typically not armed, they don't show up with a plan, or back-up. Like the titular xenomorph of the Aliens franchise, these are feral hostile exobiological organisms that will rack up a massive body count while breeding and eating as fast as they can.

Scenario: An industrial arcology has become infested by a nest of xenomorph stype extra-dimensionals. They have empathic senses, are drawn to EM fields, and the infestation needs to be cleared out as fast as possible, with the fewest number of people finding out and minimal damage to the facility. The PCs are hired in as elite exterminators, but its a dirty no questions asked NDA form filled job.

24. Dimensional Displacement

When teleportation technology fails, it can have odd side effects. Rather than the test subject being shunted from one location to another, the location itself is moved. This can be a real problem when a large section of a research facility decides to swap matter with the side of a Pacific volcano. This is how there are asteroids with spaceships inside of them, and buildings with shafts of volcanic basalt instead of the original structure.

Scenario: the PCs are working in a security detail when there is a catastrophic failure and half of the facility they are supposed to be guarding is rent in two and the south section of the compound has been transplanted into a hostile location. Instead of easy duty, keeping civvies out of the secured barracks, the PCs are looking at protecting a pair of large hangars from half of an Amerikka Command base. Meanwhile, the other half of the Amerikka Command base is staring down the PCs home garrison forces.

25. Possession

With ghosts and angels and demons Possession almost seems passe. But possession does occur, and it is often more insidious than some of the more obvious and visible threats from arcanotechnology. When aliens and big ass bugs come knocking everyone knows to grab the frag grenades and pulse rifles. It is a little bit more of a problem when it is a gang of Ko Girls who are already trouble makers to begin with. Fleshriding entities can manifest through small scale failures, or sometimes even through near death experiences with CogNet equipment (the breach in manifested through the soul of the victim). The victim gets a new nasty persona, a pet vice, and sometimes a couple of parapsychic abilities that can look like magic.

Scenario: the PCs are involved in investigating an outbreak of civil disobedience that is getting out of the usual anarch rebel phase and moving towards the hanging dead people off of the mezzanine in the food court phase. Expecting a band of movie badlands raiders, the PCs are left to face the fact that the nucleus of their opposition is a group of mall rats who overdosed on black datafeed snuffporn and have been possessed by lust/rage entities.

26. Slow Zone

Slow Zones are serious wrinkles in the perception of space-time. Everything slows down, obviously, in a slow zone, so that while hours might pass outside of the zone, days or even years might occur inside of it.

Scenario: The PCs are caught in the edge of a slow zone as it expands after an arcanotech anomaly. They are caught in a secondary effect in the event (roll again for second effect) and after they make their way through it, they emerge from the slow zone and find that while they fought and died, and suffered, something like 14 minutes elapsed outside of the zone.

27. Gravitational Fluctuation

Gravity can be manipulated with arcanotech, and there is an entire field of study devoted to levitation, hovering, and reactionless propulsion. Gravitational fluctuations are areas and zones where gravity changes intensity, direction, or even shape. The most common events involve light gravity or microgravity, or heavy to hypergravity. The severity of these issues typically keeps gravikinesis research in safe locations.

Scenario: an illegal arcanotech device has been brought into the arco and it has caused a wildfire interaction with the building power core, creating a microgravity bubble several miles around the core. The PCs have to navigate the building, find and eliminate the terrorists, and save the hostages all without the benefit of gravity (-8 to all hand to hand rolls, -6 to all move skill unless zero g trained, double all recoil penalties)

28. Hekatonkheires and Carraiths

There are cyborgs that are made from humans and machine components. These are deliberate, and take time to make. Hekatonkheires are created from ruined machines (technically the Spider Demon is a Hekatonkheire as is the Cyberdemon) that have been invested with/infested by living organic material. Carraiths are somewhat more haphazard as they are the hellish creation of sentient beings being merged with machinery and technology. They are not cyborgs, as the resulting creature is driven mad and is difficult to kill.

Scenario: the PCs are on a routine patrol when an arcanotech weapon is detonated and several power armor troopers, splattered inside their armor are spiritually merged with their mangled metal and rise as howling hate filled zombie robo revenant monsters. Carraiths hunt the survivors, and start collecting corpses and piling them into the gaping chasm in the torso of the battlemech. Once enough corpses are piled up, the carraiths will induce some sort of biomechanical transformation, turning the ruined war machine into a living unholy abomination zombie mecha thing.

There will forthcoming subs for Hekatonkheires and Carriaths

29. Collapsing Reality Bubble

Time-Space, spatial reality, perception, its all just numbers. The problem with numbers is that machines and people can get those numbers wrong with disastrous results. A reality bubble is a pocket dimension that is budded off through a series of long open ended equations (2+2, account for the gravitational mass of the Sun). These bubbles don't last long, and the reality inside of them is mutable, often exotic, and what starts looking like its point of origin, is twisted and distorted more than taffy in a taffy machine before it collapses. Best not be inside, mate.

Scenario: A lab has been swallowed by a CRB and there is only 12 hours before it becomes completely unstable. (The real lab is fine, unfortunately most of the lab staff and the Mcguffin were sucked into the bubble when it was unexpectedly born. The PCs are brought in to enter the bubble, find as many survivors as possible and return. All the while, they face unexpected horrors (add 2-3 rolls from above for entertainment value, Kansas is so Bye Bye right now) and a time limit or face getting venting into the angles between realities when the bubble bursts.

30. Honey, I Shrunk the Shadowrunners

The amount of empty space in an atom is huge compared to its actual physical components. Sometimes arcanotech has the strange effect of changing the size and mass of things when it fails. While there are certainly instances where there have been the potential for 50 foot cheerleaders (but compared to war machines of similar size, humans are pretty frail) there is greater potential for micro-sized heroes.

Scenario: The PCs have been reduced to the size of rats, and now have to find their way back to someone who can recognize what has happened to them, and then attempt to fix it. On their tails? Mutant rodents, contaminated wastelands, and the massive fortress of an arco that is now proportionately as tall as the moon to them.